Matti Braun
La Pekuniala Teorio di Silvio Gesell
Silvio Gesell was born on the 17th of March 1862. His father
was German, his mother French; they raised their children bilingual in St. Vith
in the Eifel region (then Germany, now Belgium). Being 16 he already liked the
commercial practice. At this age he went to Spain as an employee.
In 1886 he migrated to Argentina and successfully founded his own company for
dentist tools in Buenos Aires. It was there that he became a vegetarian.
During the World Depression of 1873 – 1896,
he became interested in currency questions. He published his first economical
writings between 1891 and 1900.
According to his projects, which for the first time contained a theoretical
justification of the pure paper currency, the so-called "Thornquist"-reform
was realized in Argentina. To be free for his writing he sold his company in
the year 1900 and bought a country house in Switzerland. Not counting two sojourns
of several years in Argentina, he lived there until 1919.
In 1919, Gustav Landauer, one of the main figures of the German Revolution of
1918 – 1919, invited Gesell to become minister
of finance in the short lived Bavarian Republic. He was arrested and trialed
for treason, but was acquitted later.
Afterwards he moved to the life reform community "Eden", near Berlin
and lived as a private scientist. After 1919 he was not politically active any
more, a tendency to power he did not have. Of his written works, the Natural
order of the economy deserves special attention. In the years ten and twenty
there is a growing number of followers of his theory. Organizations were founded,
magazines published, parties established to promote his ideas.
An important role in his ideas had the "free money", money that is
self devaluating, so it is not profitable to collect it. The money constantly
loses its value if the value is not maintained by adding stamps of their value.
This keeps the money in constant circulation. Another important role plays the
"free land", where the government buys all land to rent it to the
people.
Gesell died in 1930 and did not see his theories put into reality by some communities
at the era of the depression between 1930 and '33, in Germany and Austria. "Wära"
is a self devaluating currency of the period, introduced in Schwankirchen in
the forest of Bavaria. In Wörgl in Austria, a self evaluating currency
was introduced at the same time and led to a decrease of the unemployment. Both
were forbidden after a couple of years. Nowadays especially exchange circles
refer to the theories of Gesell.